Each Arizona Science Lab Workshop is conducted by a group of retired, employed engineers who are highly qualified in math, physics, computers, electronics, power generation & distribution, structures, thermal, chemistry, materials science, and computer software.

Our instructional staff has years of real world application experience in the sciences. They relate the theory being taught to everyday applications and they are passionate about what they do!

A management team is responsible for the daily operation, workshop development, scheduling, training, planning, fund raising, and future vision of the Arizona Science Lab. This group of volunteers have devoted thousands of hours to the success of the ASL. They currently are:

Lysbeth Lieber, Executive Director

ASL leadership, planning and management
Cooperative external relationships

Roy Zaborowski: Registrar & Facilities Manager

ASL facility management
Workshop bookings with schools/teachers

Rickie Currens: Treasurer, IEEE ExCom Interface, & Director of Staff Training

ASL Group Treasurer
IEEE Management Board (ExCom) interface
ASL teacher training
ASL teaching methods (pedagogy)
ASL teaching leadership

Open Position: Director of Marketing

Teacher/school and district marketing
Media and public relations
Cooperative district development planning

Amy Ortega: Director of Grant Development

Grant management & development

Arnold Brenner: Director of Curriculum & Standards Development

Workshop development, planning, and management
Arizona Science Standards compliance
Management of ASL workshop review team

Richard Hrusovsky: Director of Volunteer Staffing

Liaison to volunteer staff
Workshop volunteer staff assignments and planning
Assignment of other ASL support duties to volunteers

Open Position Director of Equipment and Supply Management

Development of demonstration equipment
Management of workshop experiments
Coordination of workshop supplies

Stuart Wecker: Webmaster

Web site design and implementation

The biographies of the management staff:

Lysbeth Lieber

Lysbeth Lieber is a retired Mechanical Engineer with 41 years of experience at Honeywell Aerospace (and its predecessor companies) in Phoenix. Her specialization was in aerodynamic and acoustic computational analysis related to aircraft gas turbine engines, focusing on the simulation of 3D flow and noise propagation in engine components. In addition, she designed and developed numerous in-house software tools to support engine component design.

She is a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and an Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. From 2012-2015, she served on the Aeroacoustics Technical Committee of AIAA, and served as Aeroacoustics Technical Chair for the 2015 AIAA Science and Technology Forum. She graduated from Arizona State University with a BSE (1975) and MSE (1984) in Mechanical Engineering. Since 2009, she has served on the Board of the ASU Fulton Schools of Engineering Alumni Chapter.

Roy Zaborowski

Roy Zaborowski is an IEEE Senior Member and the Registrar for the ASL. Mr. Zaborowski graduated with a BSEE from the University of Ill. at Urbana and worked for Sperry Flight Systems (later Honeywell) until he retired in 2006. As a hardware designer he was responsible for circuit designs used in analog air data computers.

Later, he was a lead engineer for the development of some of the first microprocessor-based avionics equipment. He helped manage the development of the automated fight engineer systems for the McDonnell-Douglas MD-11. His work also included safety, navigation, and communications systems integration and installation applications for Russian civil aircraft.

Roy is the inventor on 3 patents in his field. He is active with Habitat for Humanity, ASL, and his church.

Rickie Currens

Rickie Currens career of over 40 years has focused in systems and ground based semiconductor equipment. He joined Motorola in 1971 in engineering on the development of COMSEC equipment for the National Security Agency. For his last 16 years at Motorola, he moved to the management of system development involving military training systems, ground positioning systems, gateways for the IRIDIUM(R) program, ground systems for the Teledesic System and fixed wireless systems covering a multitude of bands.

He was Senior Vice President at Tachyon, Inc. responsible for the implementation of customer trials, order entry systems, training, installation, manufacturing operations, pricing, proposals, program management, and supply management. He was also Corporate Vice President and General Manager of the Fixed Wireless Systems Group, Network Solutions Sector (NSS) of Motorola, Inc., responsible for positioning Motorola as a leading supplier of end-to-end fixed wireless access solutions.

Rickie earned his BSEE in 1972 from the University of Arizona, his MSE from Arizona State University in 1977 and his MBA from Arizona State University in 1981.

Amy Ortega

Amy Ortega is currently the Leader of Risk & Insurance at Arizona Public Service and is responsible for and oversees risk modeling activities, company insurance spend and distribution and cost-benefit analysis on various insurance and surety mechanisms to address financial and operational risk. She has worked in risk and insurance management for more than 15 years as a Certificate Risk Manager (CRM) and has held various underwriting and consultant positions.

While working full-time, Amy also earned a B.S. in Mathematics with emphasis in Statistics from Arizona State University in 2015 and a M.S. in Business Analytics from ASU’s W.P. Carey School of Business in 2017. She is passionate about the proper and ethical use of statistics and probability and encouraging kids to pursue STEM education.

Arnold Brenner

Arnie’s long career at Motorola spanned the transition from vacuum tube to semiconductor technology in 2-way portable, mobile and infrastructure radio products. During that time he held key positions within the organization, including Executive Vice President, Motorola Inc.

Arnie was a member of the engineering team that conceived, and designed the world's first hand-held cellular telephone. He was General Manager for all international engineering, manufacturing, sales and marketing operations for the Communications Sector. He was President and CEO, Motorola Japan Group and President, Europe, Middle East and Africa, and Worldwide Government Relations Group.

Volunteer activities have included Executive Director, U.S.-Israel Science and Technology Foundation, (USISTF), Washington. DC , where he assisted Israeli companies in establishing a U.S. presence with new, innovative, high technology products. He is presently a member of the Board of Directors, USISTF.Arnie has a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Illinois Institute of Technology and an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois.

Richard Hrusovsky

Richard Hrusovsky had a long career in the aerospace industry. At Lockheed Martin, he designed, built and launched satellites for navigation, meteorology, science and communications and contributed to pioneering advances in geosynchronous satellite technology. He served as Systems Engineering Manager and Engineering Program Manager with responsibility for direct broadcast satellites for Japan and Korea. He also was Mission Director for numerous satellite launches and worked with NASA to accommodate commercial communications satellites aboard the Space Shuttle.

At Motorola’s Government and Space Technology Group, Mr. Hrusovsky was Manager of Space Segment Systems Engineering. He worked on the development, production and in-orbit management of the Iridium satellite constellation at both Motorola and Iridium Communications Inc.

Mr. Hrusovsky received his BS degree from Stevens Institute of Technology and his MSE from the University of Pennsylvania. He belongs to AAAS, Sigma Xi and is a Life Member of the IEEE. He is an amateur fine artist, ham radio operator, scuba diver and glider pilot.

Stuart Wecker

Stuart Wecker is a successful entrepreneur, technologist and teacher with over forty years of experience in data networks and distributed information systems. He was the recipient of the first IEEE Koji Kobayashi Award and was named a Fellow of both the IEEE and the ACM professional societies for his pioneering contributions to data networking technology.

He was the founder of Technology Concepts Inc., a company focused on data network software engineering, and has been a Professor of Computer Science at Northeastern University in Boston, the University of California at Berkeley, and Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff.

Mr. Wecker received a B.S. in mathematics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and an M.S. in computer science from the State University of New York, Stony Brook, NY.

The Management Team and Our Biographies

Arizona

Science Lab